In rugby, a scrum is where the two sides mash together withtheir heads down and try to secure possession of the prized ball asaction resumes after a halt in play.

That's not what's happening at the $1.5 billion Washington StateEmployees Credit Union, where staffers are now pushingcross-departmental technology projects through to completion withnew levels of speed, efficiency and collegiality.

That's according to Sandra Watson, assistant vice president ofbusiness technology at the Olympia-based credit union who spenttime her first year there working with consultants from CUTEK tostreamline WSECU's product development process.

One of the linchpins of the new process is the scrum, a termthat has been borrowed from the sports world to refer to smallgroups of colleagues working intensely and collaboratively on asoftware development project.

And those kinds of scrums are now regular daily activitiesat
WSECU as teams work on such projects as a VISA balance transfercampaign and other marketing and reporting activities, all on alist of more than 30 projects on board.

It's been a change in culture, where the credit union's smallteam of programmers and other tech staff worked in relativeisolation as they helped other departments-their internalcustomers-produce new products and services and serve members,Watson said.

“We were good at order taking and fulfillment, but solutions didnot always meet the customer need,” she said. “Today, our workflowallows for collaboration with the end user to discover root causesand implement viable and long-term solutions, the first time.”

CUTEK, a San Diego-based specialist in the Symitar Episys coreplatform, provided the template for the culture change, trainingthe credit union's analysts and programming staff and helping tocreate a new product development lifecycle-from analysis to design,programming, testing and delivery.

The consultancy cut its teeth providing Episys users withspecialized add-ons and integration services and now finds helpingto develop human collaborative processes a regular part of itsclient engagements.

“We routinely help our credit union partners reorganize theirprocesses to work more effectively with the personnel theycurrently have,” said Ron Murray, CUTEK president. “Not only intheir process and technical skills, but in analysis skills, such ashow to communicate with various departments, hold more effectivemeetings and everything else you can do to make the process awin/win for everyone involved.”

The new processes have taken hold at WSECU, Watson said. “Nowwhen an internal customer makes a request, we go meet with them andhear what the problem statement is and sit down with them and tryto understand the root cause of what they want or need. Before wewould hear the problem statement and just go off and begin coding,”she said.

The results have included the ability to create customizedsolutions that otherwise might have cost more to procure fromoutside, such as an application fraud manager that includes alerts,flagging and automated reporting functions. They also reuse thesoftware design patterns, getting six or seven applications out ofone or two coding jobs now, Watson said. The internal efficiencieshave allowed the CU's IT staff to do more with existingresources.